Physics

From the forces that keep athletes twirling and sliding, to the weird laws governing the world of the very small, to the far-out concepts of time travel and alternate universes, physics covers a lot of interesting territory. Here, Live Science keeps you abreast of all the fascinating physics discoveries.Physics

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A top down view of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's 1960s molten salt reactor experiment, an early precursor to the Chinese reactor.

China is gearing up to activate the world's first 'clean' commercial nuclear reactor

By Ben Turner

Plans for thorium reactors have been around since the 1940s, but Chinese scientists believe they are finally close to creating a working prototype.

Bezos shows the aviation glasses that once belonged to Amelia Earhart, which he took with him during the flight, at the post-flight press conference.

Jeff Bezos went to the edge of space. Does that make him an astronaut?

By Ben Turner

The billionaire's flight has opened up a debate about what "astronauts' and "space' even are.

Abstract image of a cosmic donut.

Our universe might be a giant three-dimensional donut, really.

By Paul Sutter

Astrophysicists say our universe might be shaped like a three-dimensional donut, meaning you could point a spaceship in one direction and eventually return to where you started.

Abstract background, quantum physics, wave function

AI designs quantum physics experiments beyond what any human has conceived

By Anil Ananthaswamy

Originally built to speed up calculations, a machine-learning system is now making shocking progress at the frontiers of experimental quantum physics

The ice can bend so much it can nearly form a circle.

Scientists create super-bendy ice

By Ben Turner

The researchers believe their new bendy ice strands could give us some important hints into how water ice behaves in its natural state.

Dark matter particles might interact with each other.

Can we explain dark matter by adding more dimensions to the universe?

By Paul Sutter

Dark matter could be even weirder than anyone thought, say cosmologists who are suggesting this mysterious substance could interact with itself in a higher dimensional universe.

The tiny device has the potential to shrink computers beyond existing physical limitations.

World's thinnest electronic device is 2 atoms thick

By Ben Turner

The thinner size allows electrons to move across the device much faster, which could lead to the development of much quicker computers.

The red giant star Camelopardalis.

New measurement may resolve cosmological crisis

By Adam Mann

Astronomer Wendy Freedman suggests that the latest observations of red giant stars could be closing the gap on the Hubble tension.

The white dwarf, placed next to the moon in this artist's depiction, is only slightly larger than the moon.

Frankenstein star could be on the brink of a startling transformation

By Ben Turner

Astronomers think the undead husk could transform into a neutron star — a totally new way for it to evolve.

Each of the four supercooled mirrors weighs 40 kilograms.

Largest objects ever get cooled down to their ‘quantum limit’

By Ben Turner

The researchers hope to use their apparatus to probe why large objects do not exhibit quantum effects.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein: The life of a brilliant physicist

By Adam Mann

So much more than funny hair.

The discovery was made from analysis of 30.6 million particle decays that took place in the Large Hadron Collider.

This 'charming' particle could have saved the universe

By Ben Turner

The charm meson could answer why there's more matter than antimatter in the universe.

The gravitational waves emitted by two black holes as they spiral into each other, shown in a simulation.

Famous Stephen Hawking theory about black holes confirmed

By Ben Turner

Physicists analyzed data from the first ever gravitational waves detected to prove Hawking's theory, and think that even more could be discovered from studying the ripples in space-time.

Here, a few of the stellar nurseries mapped in the ALMA survey.

100,000 star nurseries mapped in first-of-its-kind survey

By Ben Turner

The researchers say that they want to use the survey to better understand our own place in the universe.

An image of Ganymede obtained by Juno's June 7 flyby.

Jupiter's largest moon revealed in stunning detail in first close-up images in 20 years

By Ben Turner

These are the first close-ups of Ganymede in over 20 years.

The effect has been observed in a dense atomic cloud for the first time.

Physicists harness atomic 'dark states' to store light

By Ben Turner

Physicists used optical tweezers to capture their gas clouds.

The Dark Energy Camera imaged 10 selected areas of the sky called deep fields. The multiple images of each provided astronomers with a glimpse of distant galaxies and how they are distributed throughout the universe.

Did a dark energy discovery just prove Einstein wrong? Not quite.

By Paul Sutter

The Dark Energy Survey just released its most comprehensive results. But did they really prove Einstein wrong?

This animation shows the distribution of the dark matter, obtained from a numerical simulation, at a redshift z~2, or when the Universe was about 3 billion years old.

Dark matter map reveals new filaments connecting galaxies

By Stephanie Pappas

A new map of the local universe created with machine learning reveals filaments of dark matter connecting galaxies.

This artist’s impression video shows the path of the star S2 as it passes very close to the supermassive "black hole" at the center of the Milky Way.

Fluffy ball of darkinos could be lurking at the center of the Milky Way

By Paul Sutter

The supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy may not be a black hole at all, but rather a fluffy ball of dark matter called darkinos.

A close-up of the handwritten equation, one of just four known examples , in the letter.

Handwritten Einstein letter containing famous E=mc2 equation sells for $1.2 million

By Harry Baker

A letter written by Albert Einstein to a rival physicist, including a rare example of the famous E=mc2 equation in his own hand, has sold at auction for $1.2 million.